European Court of Justice fines Apple and Google heavily

The Court of Justice of the European Union definitively ruled in favor, on Tuesday, September 10, of the European Commission against the American tech giants Apple and Google, in two long-running legal cases with heavy financial stakes.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that Apple should repay €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland for having benefited from undue advantages. In a separate ruling, the Luxembourg-based CJEU upheld a €2.4 billion fine against Google for anti-competitive practices.

Both groups immediately said to each other “disappointed” in separate press releases.

The Apple case dates back to 2016, when Brussels ordered the manufacturer of the famous iPhone to repay these 13 billion euros to Ireland. The sum corresponds to the profits from a favorable tax treatment granted to the company from 2003 to 2014, in this country where Apple had repatriated all of its revenues earned in Europe (as well as in Africa, the Middle East and India).

In the Google case, judges upheld a €2.4 billion fine imposed on the group in 2017 for abusing its dominant position in the online search market. This is the second largest financial penalty ever imposed by the EU in an antitrust case. The CJEU ruled that Google had indeed “abused its dominant position by promoting its own product comparison service.”